


Safety

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Guns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-28
Updated: 2012-09-28
Packaged: 2017-11-15 04:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/523190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"I don't dislike guns. I respect what guns can do."</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safety

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Iulia for aiding and abetting!

Stiles grabs the Sig and the Glock from the gun safe, tucking both into the front of his pants before he dumps the holsters, empty clips, ammunition boxes, and cleaning kit into his backpack. Then he hesitates, because he's still got a hand free and there's no point leaving firepower behind.

"Precision or stopping power?" he asks, hand hovering between the shotgun and the hunting rifle. 

The answer's obvious as soon as he says it--this will not be a fight at a distance--and his hand is on the shotgun even as Derek calls up from downstairs, "Stopping power."

He walks, slowly and carefully, down the stairs. All the guns are stored unloaded, but it doesn't matter. You don't run with a gun in your hands unless there's no alternative, and you definitely don't run with multiple guns stuck awkwardly into your pants. He drops his backpack on the coffee table, lays out the three guns beside it, and then looks around for Derek as he yanks the bag open and reaches for a couple of clips to load.

"Sit down," Derek says. He's holding a kitchen towel to his side, and Stiles nods his thanks, because Derek chose the right one--brand new, readily replaced, with no memories of his mother, nothing his dad will ever notice disappearing. If he'd dug into the back of the drawer to take the ugly, stained, threadbare ones covered in cows and sunflowers, Stiles would have had to get blood _everywhere_ over it. 

"We have some time," Derek adds, lowering himself gingerly into an armchair, and Stiles nods. Derek needs to stop bleeding, for one thing, and the others have to get into position. Stiles sits down on the couch and then takes out a clip and a box of ammunition from his backpack.

He automatically sits a little straighter and feels the impulse to fidget fade when he's handling the ammunition. The bullets make a familiar metallic click, sliding into place, and for just a minute he can almost forget what's going on.

Derek says quietly, "You don't like guns."

Stiles looks up with a frown, sees that intent _reading you_ look on Derek's face, and then shakes his head and looks down. "Not that you'd have a lot of opportunities to observe the difference, but, no, I don't dislike guns. I respect what guns can do."

Derek doesn't say anything, so Stiles goes on, filling up the silence that surrounds the click-click-click under his fingers as he starts loading the second clip. "My dad always had a gun, obviously. Guns. Service weapon, personal weapon. Deer rifle, not that my dad was big on hunting, but he had friends who were. He used to go hunting with the guys one or two weekends out of every fall. My mom, now," Stiles sets the second clip down next to the first and it's easy to say this, to talk about her, to Derek who won't react or say anything back, who's lost so much more, "my mom actually did not like guns, and she did not like me and guns being in the same place, but she married my dad, you know, so that wasn't really going to work out long term. So she just told my dad, he had to make sure I was safe, he had to teach me enough to be safe."

Third clip, now, and Stiles's hands are still steady, and the box is almost empty. His dad hadn't stocked up for serious battle. That'll change after tonight, along with a lot of other things. 

He's not thinking about that. He's telling this story. 

"Even when I was a baby I was still, you know, me. Into everything, wanting to know everything. I was, textbook, the kid who shoots himself in the face with his dad's service weapon, right? Wanting to see how it worked. And my dad figured, how do you teach a kid not to mess with guns? Show him what a gun does. He could be careful as hell, and he always has been, but that didn't mean I'd never end up in some kind of situation," _case in fucking point_ , but Derek doesn't say it, so Stiles just keeps going.

"So one day when I was maybe three or four, that winter, my mom was gone one day and my dad said, okay, we're going to go to the gun range and you get to see how daddy's gun works. And I was so excited, I remember that, I was bouncing off the walls. And my dad got me into my shoes and jacket and everything and then he says, okay, pick out one of the pillows off the couch to bring along, and I didn't even think about it, right?"

Fourth clip, now. One for each of the handguns plus a backup apiece. If that's not enough, nothing Stiles can do will be.

"I'm like four years old, why would I think about it. I pick out my favorite one, and I hold it on my lap all the way there in the car, and when we get to the range my dad puts the big old hearing protection headphones on me, and lets me climb up on his back, and I watch from there while he loads his gun and then he calls the, the thing, you know, that holds the target paper? And he takes the pillow and he clips it on there."

Stiles lays down the last clip and picks up the guns, starts breaking them down to check that everything's clean and oiled.

"And I'm starting to get a bad feeling now, but my dad says, okay, now we watch what guns do, and he sends it down--really not far, maybe five yards or something, pretty much point blank--and he brings the gun up and aims it and tells me about sights and where to look, and I'm sighting pretty much right down his arm to the gun. To the pillow.

"And then he fires, and--that's why he put me on his back, right, was to let me feel the recoil, so I feel the kick right through his shoulder, it knocks my head back a little, and that almost totally distracts me from the hole he just put in the pillow, then bang, bang, bang, he does it five more times. And after about the third time I've noticed what's happening to the pillow and I'm pretty much already crying, and when my dad brings the target holder back and the pillow's right there, all the stuffing leaking out and these powder burns around each hole, I just lost it and screamed."

Stiles snaps the Sig back together and slides the loaded clip into place, then the Glock.

"I didn't touch my dad's gun for years after that. He could have left it loaded on the table and I wouldn't have laid a finger on it. He told me last year he thought about using a stuffed animal instead of a pillow and realized right before that I would have been actually scarred for life."

Stiles finally looks up and Derek's staring at him in what will have to be called--because they really do not have time for anything else--fascination. Stiles digs out the holsters and pulls his button-down off so he can get them in place, one over his shoulders and one clipped to the waist of his pants. 

"But I wasn't, I got over it. I knew what guns did and I knew how much to be scared, that's all. When I was seven my dad taught me about loading and cleaning and how to check if the safety was on. Eight, he got an air gun and taught me to shoot that. Twelve, hunting rifle. Thirteen, shotgun. Fourteen, combination to the safe in case of emergencies. Sixteen, these." Stiles puts the pistols in place, pulls his shirt back on, and grabs the shotgun, loads it as well, quick and businesslike. Derek has let go of the towel now. They've given the others as much time as they can. It's on now.

"I respect guns," Stiles repeats, standing up and shrugging his mostly-empty backpack onto the shoulder that doesn't have a gun tucked under it. He racks the shotgun and adds, "I'm my father's son."

Derek nods and stands, letting the pale yellow towel with its nearly-dry bloodstain fall away. "I know. And we're going to get him back."


End file.
